Back pain medicine is the most common treatment for all types of symptomatic back and spine conditions. Regardless of the cause of the discomfort: muscular, skeletal, psychosomatic or idiopathic, drugs are usually the first choice of both doctors and patients when it comes to finding back pain relief.
Pharmaceutical medicine has been a blessing and a curse to the back care industry. On one hand, some patients require and benefit from temporary use of powerful painkillers to overcome injuries or to recover from back surgery. On the other hand, pain management drugs have become a prime contributor to the back pain epidemic due to dependency issues often faced by long-term users of these potent pharmaceuticals.
This essay provides an objective assessment of the pros and cons of ongoing pharmacological therapy for back pain patients.
Back Pain Medicine Benefits
Medical science is wondrous in its innovations and developments. Medicine is one of man’s crowning achievements. Pharmaceutical products can play an important role in the recovery of many patients with a variety of causative conditions. Sometimes, a medication might provide the necessary difference to improve a patient’s quality of life or functionality.
Some medicines actually help to heal a painful condition directly. Other drugs help to ease the symptoms while the body can heal itself naturally. Regardless, if used correctly, drugs can be a helpful part of a combined treatment approach for back pain.
Back Pain Medicine Drawbacks
Medicine is usually considered purely symptomatic treatment. While this is humanitarian for patients with severe unresolvable pain, it is not the goal of any curative therapy. Back pain conditions should be solved, not muffled under the powerful and dangerous effects of drugs.
Finding a back pain cure should be the priority, with symptomatic treatment administered judicially and temporarily. Medicine can create health problems of its own, including dependency issues, toxicities and interactions. Unfortunately, many patients are not properly cautioned on the very real hazards of most common pain drugs.
Risks of Medicines for Back Pain
Drugs are basically bad for your body, with very few exceptions. All drugs have known and unknown side effects which can be harmful to some patients and even fatal to others. Drugs can cause separate health problems that in turn, may need to be treated with additional drugs.
When does the cycle end?
Pharmaceutical pain relief also carries a substantial risk of dependency and addiction. Narcotic and opioid pain killers are especially guilty of turning the very patients they were prescribed to help into junkies living life from dose to dose. Millions have been affected by addiction to prescription drugs and countless lives have been lost or ruined.
Of course, this surge in prescription drug addiction has created a new specialty in the medical industry. Anti-addiction clinics are popping up at record pace, all in the effort to help the hordes beat their dependency issues with these powerful drugs. What process do these doctors and clinics use? Of course… more drugs.
I ask again, When will the cycle end?
Here is more vital information on the dangers of prescription pain killers.
Pharmaceutical Back Pain Medicine
I understand this topic is not applicable to all back pain patients. There are some unfortunate individuals who have been permanently physically altered and might suffer perennial pain due to a severe back injury. However, these cases are rare.
Most patients simply want drugs to make them more comfortable without any thought to the risks or side effects. Some of these patients actually think that pain is a good excuse to get high and use drugs. I have met lots of these types in my life. The irony is that these people are sometimes suffering from psychosomatic pain and are subconsciously looking for a way to numb themselves emotionally, as well as physically. Doctors must be very careful about providing drugs to any patient long-term, but should be especially vigilant of patients who actively request drugs at every turn.
Back pain drugs are a huge business. Doctors make money prescribing drugs. A doctor who regulates his or her prescribing too far will lose patients. This is a grim reality. It puts the physician in a difficult position. They are caught between the realms of profit and ethics, law and morals, taking a stand or surrendering to the masses.
Doctors have already been regulated to death, but it is obviously not enough. They need to pay close attention to what they prescribe and to whom. They need to follow-up on progress and not allow a patient to slip into a regimen of drug use, just for the sake of drug use. It is a tall order, but given the history of medical professionals, if anyone can do it, doctors can. At least I hope they can.
